


Lullaby for a Snowy Night

by Elleth



Category: Carole & Tuesday (Anime)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 15:03:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21163604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: A missing moment on the bridge inOnly Love Can Break Your Heart.





	Lullaby for a Snowy Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VSSAKJ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VSSAKJ/gifts).

How could Kyle kissing that other woman destroy her world so suddenly and completely?

It made Tuesday think of Cybelle as she walked - how that rejection must have hurt, how jealous Carole had been toward her. Tuesday's thoughts went round and round in her head like the laundry of the song, but to call that dancing - not so much. 

Not at all. 

Wet drifts of snow had gathered on the sidewalk. Tuesday found it hard to care enough to even lift her feet properly, dragging them through the clumps until they went numb. She hoped that if she walked long enough, her heart would grow just as numb in the icy cold of the evening. Instead, it beat on with a painful regularity, now that the first shock had drained from her system. 

How easily she could imagine being in the other woman's place. How easily she could imagine leaning into Kyle's arms, a thrill that sent heat all through her, and probably after a while, a regular, warm glow. 

It didn't even take an effort, picturing it, seeing the lyrics he'd inspire written in her notebook, transforming into song just as easily, but the melody had become a tangled thread in her head that was threatening to pull her in until she lost herself in it. 

Before that managed to happen, she stopped by the river. It wasn't even conscious thought that made her pull the notebook from her purse. Her hand shook as she hovered it over the water of the channel, which had been turned into a thousand little wave-rings from the snowflakes falling into the water. They formed wet stains on the leather binding of the notebook, too. 

They weren't tears, at least. Only snowflakes. Those weren't her fault, but it was uncanny how the weather went with her emotions, blast or none. It never snowed on Mars. She had never been quite so helpless since running from home, since faced with her mother's indifference. 

Since holding Hummingbird for the first time, not yet knowing how to play. 

Those times, it had been better to hang on. Maybe she could use the book for her own songs. Overwrite the memories. Learn to deal with the pain. Or - this time - 

\- better to let go. Her fingers opened.

A flutter of pages, a larger ripple. The notebook, pulled by its own weight, sank into the dark water. The rings of its splash faded away. 

The snow kept falling, but she felt at least a little lighter, even if she would have to keep moving if she didn't want to think. She hadn't found what she was looking for, what was pulling her. 

* 

Tuesday kept on walking until Carole and her umbrella faded out of the snowy dark before her, carrying a little island of shelter and warmth and reassuring arms around her. 

Of course they were meeting on the bridge, near the same spot where they'd first met - just there, if she lifted her eyes over Tuesday's shoulder, she could make out the two pillars where Carole had first been standing, suddenly tilting her world into making sense.

_Can you feel my_   
_Can you feel my_   
_Can you feel my_   
_Tears they won't dry_

The tears came, finally. 

Carole blurred into her even when Tuesday tried to focus her eyes, and things became clear then. The world tilted a little more, and things slipped into place, aligning perfectly into a full picture. 

Kyle wasn't even in it. Carole was, the lights of Alba City all around her. 

She clung on, and never wanted to let go again. 

* * *

Her birthday still was a few months ahead, but that night felt a little like it, Carole thought. 

Must have. 

She'd been born when it snowed on Earth, and with the snow settling onto Alba City slowly outside the storeroom windows, she couldn't help imagining her past. 

It felt very little like a birthday. For one thing, she would want to spend it with Tuesday, and for the other… well, she wasn't a helpless baby any longer, but she hadn't felt as alone as that evening in forever. Even just knowing that Tuesday had feelings for her journalist friend left her checking her phone anxiously every few minutes. 

She wasn't an idiot. She'd seen her friend's happy giddiness, acting like a lovable airhead. Or, well, more than usual. A gift, even, a physical gift - that wasn't Tuesday's style at all, unless someone meant a lot to her. She'd much rather write songs for people. 

She had it bad, that was obvious, and when she didn't come home, Carole couldn't shake the feeling that something had gone badly wrong. Not that something had gone very right: She might have gone home with Kyle, to stay the night. A pipe dream that Tuesday might even be chasing after for real, but a knot in the pit of her stomach told her different.

It wasn't a hard decision at all to get dressed and head out. The snow was coming down faster now, in bigger flakes, and all the sidewalks had turned into mirrors of the city lights. She knew where Tuesday had meant to go - the rooftop café - but that was abandoned by patrons, and she headed out again. 

It felt much like a birth, walking through the snow. Sometimes it made her think of closing the umbrella and just letting the weather wash over her, revelling in the cold and wet instead of ducking away from it to keep what little warmth she could keep layered under her winter clothes. 

Like a blanket-wrapped baby. Had she really changed so little since her birth?

In a way that made Tuesday inevitable, eventually. 

Her hair was a mess and she dissolved into a picture of misery standing before Carole. 

Putting her arms around Tuesday always made Carole feel born again, but never more than when Tuesday finally withdrew from the hug, lifting her tearstained face, and tucked a stray lock behind Carole's ear. 

Her fingers were icy. Carole willed herself not to twitch, but her lips did, in spite of it all. 

Their eyes met. A snowflake must have gotten into Carole's, because they were filling up, then welling over, blurring the lights of the city into a halo of light around Tuesday's head. She blinked them away, lifted her head again.

This time, the eye-contact lasted too long to be entirely innocent. The imprint of small white teeth in Tuesday's lip, flooding her pale lips with vibrant red, a spot of colour in the faded colours of the evening, the tracks of snow and tears on her face.

Tuesday was sure that Carole was, that moment, bedraggled mouse that she was, the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, and that no snowflake, even if it snowed on Mars day after day now, would taste as sweet as the one that melted on their joined lips as they both closed the distance between them.

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to go with the theme of song titles for the episodes, but couldn't find a fitting one - so here's a modified version of Vienna Teng's _Lullaby for a Stormy Night_. I hope you enjoyed the fic!


End file.
